Man held over funeral volley

A man in his 40's has been arrested by gardaí investigating the firing of shots over the coffin of murdered Real IRA member Alan Ryan in Dublin in September.

The man was arrested this afternoon in the Dublin area and is currently detained under the provisions of Section 30 of the Offences Against the State Act 1939 at Lucan Garda Station.

A volley of rounds were fired over the 32-year-old’s coffin outside his home on Grange Abbey Drive, Donaghmede, Dublin 13 before his funeral on September 8th.

A search and arrest operation was carried out by gardaí in the week after the funeral as part of an investigation - codenamed Operation Ambience – into the firing of the shots. More than 30 residential dwellings and commercial premises in Dublin, Kildare and Meath were searched and 17 people were arrested.

Ryan, who had served time in prison for firearms offences linked to his membership of the Real IRA, was shot on the afternoon of September 3rd at Grange Lodge Avenue, Clongriffin, north Dublin.

In recent years he had emerged as a key player in the organisation in Dublin, fundraising by extorting publicans and drug gangs.

Gardaí believe one of the Dublin organised crime gangs with whom he had come into conflict was behind the murder.